2003

Alexi Murdoch

On Four Songs, his debut EP, Murdoch showcases a songwriting style in which he impossibly manages to build the grandeur of arena-rock anthems into quiet folk songs. With "Only Fear" and "Orange Sky" especially, he writes and sings with an urgency that implores you to take notice. His music assaults the listener from all angles - with a lyrical style that is both earnest and thought-provoking (while avoiding the pervasive cliche and banality of today's music), and with the melding of his subtle guitar and his calm, soothing voice, creating an atmospheric quality that ensnares the senses.Website:aleximurdoch.com

Amos Lee

Highly influenced by soul, folk, and blues music, Amos Lee directs his music with a spirit and presence rooted in American tradition. Taking inspiration from soul greats Stevie Wonder, and Donny Hathaway as well as from folk legends John Prine and Dave Van Ronk, Amos delivers a unique breed of folky soul music that aims to unite, uplift, and inspire. Amos has recently been touring both in Europe and here on the North American Tour with Norah Jones. He played the WXPN Singer Songwriter Weekend Festival on July 18 in Philadelphia. You can pick up his EP at his shows or through CD Baby.Website:amoslee.com

Damien Rice

With the album unfinished, Damien Rice released his first single "The Blower's Daughter" in Ireland in September 2001. Entering straight into the top 20, his ensuing tour was a resounding success. O, Damien's debut album, was released the following February to hails from the critics of "mesmerizing," "absorbing" and "emotional." Now at double platinum status album in Ireland, Damien Rice has received three nominations in the 2003 Meteor Ireland Music Awards, as well as scooping the board in the Hot Press Readers' Poll for Best Album, and entering the top 5 for Best Male Singer, Best Live Act, Best Songwriter and Best Single.Website:damienrice.com

Darcie Miner

Growing up in a musical family, Darcie went from mimicking the bands she admired and that her parents played on the home stereo, including Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, to picking up the guitar at age 11. And even while this precocious singer/songwriter/guitarist assesses where she's come from, she's hurtling into a very promising future in rock music. After building a regional following in the northeast with steady touring and opening slots for the likes of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Wyclef Jean, Beth Hart, Jeffrey Gaines and Edwin McCain, Miner and her crack four-piece band are ready for national exposure.Website:darcieminorband.com

Derek Trucks

The Derek Trucks Band has been a work in progress for over 10 years, slowly blending jazz, rock, blues, Latin, Eastern Indian, and other world music into the sound that now defines the DTB. The mission of the band has been to assemble a group of musicians that share a passion for improvisation and musical exploration and to develop a special musical unity by performing with this core group of players for an extended period of time. The focus of the band is on the art form itself, despite the current trend of image-driven music on the scene today. The DTB aims to create progressive roots music in an effort to move the art form forward and re-establish substance over hype.Website:derektrucks.com

eastmountainsouth

At its core, the group is Kat Maslich and Peter Adams. Both are vocalists, instrumentalists and writers imprinted with the undeniable regional character one might expect from children of the South. Their music, as exemplified by eastmountainsouth, is an alloy of hill-country melodies, contemporary studio techniques and literary-minded lyrics that frequently trace the experience of loss.Website:eastmountainsouth.com

Gemma Hayes

Gemma honed her songwriting skills playing the Dublin circuit by night. Despite audiences and critics instantly warming to her gorgeous melodies and haunting songs, she gradually grew tired of the restriction of the acoustic guitar and started to put together a band. Her vision to combine the singer songwriter elements of her acoustic work with the layered harmonic discord of her favorite artists like My Bloody Valentine. It's been this aim to combine the opposing forces of fragility and chaos that has remained central to her work since.Website:gemmahayes.com

Kathleen Edwards

Kathleen Edwards was born in Ottawa, Canada to parents in the Foreign Service, and spent portions of her youth in Korea and Switzerland. At age five, she began classical violin studies that continued for the next twelve years. (Kathleen arranged and played all the string parts on Failer.) "A lot of my classical training was by ear, and I think that played a big part in my being able to play guitar and write melodies," she says. "My mother was a piano teacher and my dad is a great singer - in fact, they met in a choir. So my older brother and I were both thrown into playing music almost from birth."Website:kathleenedwards.com

Robert Randolph and the Family Band

The music of Robert Randolph is more than just one man playing a pedal steel guitar. It is more than just a band, a family, on stage engulfing its audience with intense jams. It is a unique style and a new genre of music altogether. Hearing it for the first time, you get the feeling of meeting someone for the first time and knowing instantly you've met a lifelong friend. The music of Robert Randolph, at its heart, is a friendship. A friendship between Robert and his band - they are his cousins in blood and in passion. A friendship between the musicians and the music itself - they pour their emotion into each note, their souls into each jam.Website:robertrandolph.net

Sam Roberts

Everything about singer Sam Roberts seems rockstar-ready. He enjoys a good time, is crazy about sports and lives for the road, whether it's with his band or as a world traveler. The music penned for The Inhuman Condition is witty, straightforward stuff reminiscent of all that was good about classic British and American pop-not too cool, not too specific, melodic and rocking, the type of music that makes you move.Website:samrobertsband.com

Polyphonic Spree

Dallas symphonic pop group the Polyphonic Spree is less a band than a happening, in the 1960's sense of the word. When the group takes to the stage for a live performance, its two dozen members are costumed in flowing robes of snowy white, an appropriate backdrop for their happy and uplifting musical message that's catchy pop minimally laced by gospel. Fans have compared them to both the Flaming Lips and the Beach Boys, with a smidgen of lively Godspell-like attitude thrown into the mix.Website:thepolyphonicspree.com

The Thorns

"We're The Thorns," Matthew Sweet tells the crowd of assembled radio programmers and various music industry folks at an out-of-the-way resort on Hawaii's Kohala Coast. It's early evening on Thursday, February 13, and Sweet is introducing a new trio who, individually, are already quite well-known. Sweet, Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge come equipped with a resume that features, between them, 15 albums' - including one gold-seller (Sweet's Girlfriend), and one platinum (Mullins' Soul's Core), and one of those songs that was absolutely everywhere back in 1998 (Mullins' "Lullaby"). The introduction as The Thorns is particularly appropriate given that this is the very first time anyone outside of the group's immediate circle is seeing them perform.Website:thethorns.com